Potassium and Your Heart

Potassium is a mineral found in many foods, mainly fruits and vegetables. It helps nerves and muscles work properly, especially the heart. If the potassium gets too high in the blood, muscles become weak and the heart may slow down and even stop beating.

Healthy kidneys remove extra potassium from the body. When the kidneys fail, this no longer happens. Dialysis removes some of the extra potassium from the blood. The potassium must be controlled in the diet in order to keep the potassium in the blood from becoming too high between dialysis treatments. This requires learning which foods are higher in potassium. Much of the potassium in our diets comes from fruits and vegetables.

Typically dialysis patients can have 1-2 choices from the high potassium list, 2-3 choices from the medium potassium list and 3-4 choices from the low potassium list per day. However, this depends on your laboratory value of potassium in your blood.

Each month your potassium level will be checked. The potassium level in your blood will help determine if you are eating enough or too much high potassium foods.